sitelen pona

sitelen pona is a logographic writing system for Toki Pona created by Sonja Lang, the original creator of the language. The system was described in her 2014 book Toki Pona: The Language of Good. In this system, each individual word is depicted by its own symbol, written in left to right in horizontal lines, the lines being read starting with the top line.

The text reads as follows: jan Sonja li pali e toki ni. ona li sitelen e lipu pu.

Proper adjectives are shown with characters inside a cartouche, inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs. Within a cartouche, only the first sound of each word is read, each then strung together to form the name.

Use of punctuation is not defined within this system. Some users use some forms of punctuation, but using English punctuation will cause confusion, as the exclamation point resembles the glyphs for "a" and "o", and the question mark resembles the glyph for "seme."

The glyph of a head word may be combined with the glyph of one modifier. The modifier can either go on top of the head or inside of the head.

Examples for combined glyphs: pilin ike (scalar), telo lete (scalar), kala lili (stacked), toki pona (scalar)